Gulf-backed Innio jumps in latest AI-related IPO

• $25bn valuation after IPO
• Gas engines for data centres
• Adia is co-owner

Innio, a UAE-backed maker of power-generation engines, rose on its Nasdaq debut, highlighting growing Gulf investment in companies supplying critical infrastructure for the AI boom.

The company opened at $31 per share on Thursday and closed above $33. That’s nearly 23 percent above its set start price of $27, giving it a $25 billion valuation.

Based in Munich, Germany, Innio spun off from General Electric in 2018 and is co-owned by private equity investor Advent International and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Adia) through AI Alpine, a Luxembourg-based holding company.

It manufactures on- and off-grid gas power systems in Austria and the US for sale to data centres and other civilian and industrial end users in 100 countries.

In the IPO, it floated 90 million secondary shares from AI Alpine, 15 million more than it originally planned, the company said in a press release ahead of the listing.

Global electricity needs are rising rapidly due to a “step-change” in consumption from AI data centres and the broader electrification of residential, industrial and commercial markets, according to the prospectus Innio filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on May 11.

Demand growth is expected to jump from an annual average of 0.3 percent from 2010 to 2025 to 1.6 percent over the next decade, the company said, citing independent research.

AI will put a “huge squeeze” on the grid in the next four years, and companies are starting to opt out of such power sources, said Samuel Hammond, director of AI policy and chief economist at the Foundation for American Innovation in Washington.

“There’s this mega-trend of behind-the-meter energy production where instead of tapping into the grid, you roll in a bunch of natural gas generators and power your data centre that way,” he said on Thursday at a Middle East Institute event about AI investments in the US and the Gulf.

• Anthropic IPO filing lifts Gulf appetite for US AI
• Search is changing. GCC brands must shift to keep up
• MGX and partners to expand Campus AI in France

Innio took more than $1.6 billion in equipment orders in the first quarter of this year, a nearly 150 percent increase from the same period in 2025, according to the prospectus. More than $1 billion came from data centres, up from $309 million as of March last year.

Companies working across AI, many of them with strong Gulf support, are dominating the IPO scene this year.

California-based chipmaker Cerebras, which maintains strong links with Emirati AI developer G42 and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi, went public in mid-May.

Its stock now fetches around $215, which is higher than its opening price of $185 but lower than the $385 peak it reached on its first day on the Nasdaq.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Anthropic and Sam Altman’s OpenAI are among the industry giants lining up to list this year.